Necho I

The new administration set up in Egypt at Assurbanipals
behest consisted again of the twenty governors and vice-kings appointed
earlier by Esarhaddon. At the head of the list was Necho, who received
Memphis and Sais as his sharetwo of the most important cities of
the period.

But the governors were not content with their subordinate
position under an Asiatic overlord. As told by Assurbanipal, their
hearts plotted evil. They sent mounted messengers to Tirhaka, saying:
Let brotherhood be established among us, and let us help one another.
We shall divide the land in two, and among us there shall not be another
lord. But soon the Assyrians caught wind of the plot: An officer
of mine heard of these matters and met their cunning with cunning. He
captured their mounted messengers together with their messages, which
they had dispatched to Tirhaka, king of Ethiopia. (1)
The Assyrian reaction was characteristically swift and decisive: The governors
were arrested, bound in chains, and sent to Nineveh to face the wrath
of Assurbanipal.

There followed a wave a savage reprisals in the cities
of Egypt against the civilian population. The soldiers out to the
sword the inhabitants, young and old~.~.~. they did not spare anybody
among them. They hung their corpses from stakes, flayed their skins, and
covered with them the wall of the towns. (2)
It happened as Isaiah had prophecied when he warned that the Egyptians
would be given into the hand of a cruel lord; and a fierce king
shall rule over them. (19:4).

When the twenty governors reached Nineveh, all save one
were put to death: only Necho, vice-king of Memphis and Sais, was allowed
to live. Assurbanipal, in need of a reliable ally to govern Egypt and
keep it safe from the Ethiopians, chose Necho to be sent back to the country
as its sole king. And I, Assurbanipal, inclined towards friendliness,
had mercy upon Necho, my own servant, whom Esarhaddon, my own father,
had made king in Kar-bel-matate [Sais]. The king of Assyria secured
Nechos allegiance by an oath more severe than the former.
I inspired his heart with confidence, clothed him in splendid (brightly-colored)
garments, laid upon him a golden chain as the emblem of his royalty~.~.~.
Chariots, horses, mules, I presented to him for his royal riding. My officials
I sent with him at his request. (3)

This Necho lives in history as Ramses I of the Nineteenth,
and Necho I of the Twenty-sixth Dynasties. He was installed by Assurbanipal
in ca. -655, a score of years after Haremhabs final expulsion. We
shall continue, in this reconstruction of history, to refer to him as
Ramses I, although an earlier king of that name, Ramses Siptah, held the
throne briefly decades earlier, in the time of Sargon II, and might therefore
have a better claim to that title.

It is sometimes surmised that it was Haremhab who appointed
Ramses I to the throne; but the course of this reconstruction makes it
evident that some twenty-two years passed from the time of Haremhabs
expulsion by Tirhaka (ca. -688) and the accession of Ramses I (ca. -665).
Historians have wondered that none of the extant inscriptions of Ramses
I contains any reference to Haremhab, and that no traceable relation of
Ramses I to the family of Haremhab has been found.(4)
Instead, Ramses I calls himself Conductor of the Chariot of His
Majesty, Deputy of His Majesty in North and South, Fanbearer
of the King on His Right Hand. (5)
The similarity of these titles to those borne earlier by Haremhab has
been noted(6)as
we saw, both Haremhab and Ramses I were appointees of Assyrian kings:
Haremhab of Sennacherib and Ramses I of Assurbanipal.

Assurbanipal also elevated Nechos son to the position
of co-rulership with his father, and let him reign in Athribis. The Assyrian
called him Nabushezibanni, but the Greek authors knew him as Psammetichos.
In his own inscriptions he names himself Seti Meri-en-Men-maat-Re, or
Seti Ptah-Maat. It is known from Egyptian sources that Seti was co-regent
with his father Ramses I.(7)

In both his existences, Ramses I--Necho I lived only one
year and a few months after being crowned.(8)

[Ramses I reigned, according
to Manetho, for one year and four months; This is confirmed by a stele
dated to his second year (Gardiner, Egypt of the Pharaohs,
p. 248. The length of Nechos reign can be determined from the
Assyrian documents: It began ca. -655 when he was installed by Assurbanipal,
and ended in -664/663 with his assassination by Tandamane. The Egyptologists,
looking for Nechos monuments apart from those of Ramses I, have
failed to find any inscriptional evidence whatsovever for the reign
of Necho I.]